Tag Archives: birthday

Today Pixie had her first birthday. We are struggling to believe that she’s been here for a whole year as it has gone so fast. She is still a wee thing, wearing clothes that her brother and sister were wearing at 6 months. She has worn out the knees of several pairs of trousers recently having been wearing and crawling in them for so long but having started walking can’t wear the too long next size up ones just yet. I made her a couple of pairs of simple trousers from remnants over the weekend so hopefully we can make it a bit longer without needing to buy a third round of 3-6 months trousers.

We bought her a scuttle bug ride on which she is almost big enough to use easily. She can’t climb on by herself but can get off and is getting more successful at moving around. And her own water bottle which she’s super happy about because unlike the big kids ones this doesn’t get taken off her.

In general she’s a happy wee thing, trying to communicate, getting into mischief and trying to keep up with her siblings. She doesn’t really believe in naps and is not great at night but will at times play on her own (or spend her time bothering her siblings) so sometimes I get little bits of crafting time.

I made her cake, chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream and sugar paste flowers. She was super excited to see it and ate rather a large piece as well as some of the flowers.

Today Hobbity-boo turns 6. Having a 4 year old and a 6 year old somehow sounds much older than a 3 and a 5 year old. We are having macaroni cheese for dinner tonight because that’s her favourite. She currently loves unicorns, fairies and rainbows but still likes to play dinosaurs and trucks with her brother. She loves school and is reading really well now. Her favourite colour is still “I like all the colours”. Her favourite shirt was the one with monsters on it until a few weeks ago when she got a new red one. For her birthday party yesterday she asked for a rainbow cake with rainbows on the inside and the outside, it had to stand up and she wanted clouds on the end. I think I delivered:

Recipe – a combination of a couple of pound cake recipes, divided into six, coloured and layered in the tin.

Cake Tin – ring mould – this one was listed as a savarin mould and had the least curve on the corners I could find.

Icing – I cut it in half, levelled it and then stuck it together with plain buttercream. I then applied a crumb coat to the cake and the clouds. The next day I mixed up a heap of buttercream, divided it into six and coloured it before piping it with the large star nozzle.

Clouds – rice bubbles (krispies) and marshmallows mould into balls and covered with two layers of plain buttercream.

Food colouring – I used Wiltons Gels in Leaf Green, Red Red, Golden Yellow, Pink, Violet and Royal Blue. I combined Red Red and Golden Yellow to make the Orange in both the cake and icing. I used Red Red to make the red cake layer but combined it with Pink to get a better icing colour.

Today is Wee Man’s fourth birthday. I’m not quite sure how that happened so fast. He loves dinosaurs, trucks and numbers. He wants to do homework like his big sister and plays at being a baby like his little one. Orange is still his favourite colour and he loves to eat sausages and pasta (or best of all sausage inside pasta). He’ll be starting school in August (eep!) and is getting closer and closer to being ready for it. He’s having a wee little party with a few friends, party games and cake!

Recipe: Chocolate cake from my Edmond’s cookbook sized up by 2/3rds. (Baking takes about twice as long or more than recipe states.)

Cake tin: Large and small hemispheres

Sculpting: took the sides and part of back off the small hemisphere to butt it up to the large one. Took chunks out of the sides of the large hemisphere to create the legs. Used scraps to create a tail. Smushed it all together with buttercream. Frill created with marshmallows and rice bubbles (rice krispies), shaped by hand and then attached to the buttercream already in place at the neck.

Icing: Buttercream to sculpt and as a crumbcoat. 500g of orange fondant to cover – mostly in one sheet but with patching around the edges and between the legs. Water and fingers used to smooth out joins. Had to make myself stop fiddling with it trying to make it perfect.

The first week of February is cake week in our house. Both the kids birthdays are this week and they each have their own opinions on cake. It makes for quite a lot of cake. Half of the Wee Man’s ended up in the freezer as we hadn’t got through it before I made Hobbity-boo’s cake for her party on Saturday. Luckily half of that one went home with party guests so we are not completely overwhelmed with cake.

Both cakes have a chocolate base – I’ve used this recipe several times before and although it takes much longer to bake than the recipe says it comes out lovely and moist. The recipe is from Edmonds Cookbook (mine is the edition printed in 1999). They are coated with chocolate buttercream before fondant.

Wee Man asked for an orange tractor cake. He is obsessed with trucks and things at the moment. I used this tutorial as inspiration and started with a square cake. There are parts where the fondant is a bit thin (I was worried about running out of black) but the kids agreed that it looked like a tractor. The back wheels are donuts and the front small circles of cake.

For the third year in a row Hobbity-boo has asked for a ladybird cake (though she tells me that next year she wants a rainbow). This year it is purple and black and we used a number of different cutters to make leaves and flowers for around the base (added advantage of hiding any wobbly bits). The antenna are fondant wrapped around cut down straws. I’m happier with the fondant on this, I had plenty so wasn’t trying to spread it so thin.